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Mistral AI

French AI startup releasing open-weight models; a leading European frontier AI company.

Safety Documents

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Responsible Scaling Policy
Mistral AI Safety Policy / Acceptable Use Policy. No comprehensive Responsible Scaling Policy equivalent found. Mistral has usage policies and a general safety approach. No FSF-equivalent framework published.🔗
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Model Card / System Card
Mistral model technical reports / Hugging Face cards. Technical documentation on Hugging Face for open-weight models. No formal system cards with safety evaluation sections comparable to frontier labs found.🔗
Safety Benchmark Results
No published comprehensive safety benchmark results found in frontier lab standard format. Enkrypt AI study found Pixtral models significantly more vulnerable than OpenAI models.
Acceptable Use Policy
Mistral has Terms of Service and AUP. Coverage of prohibited uses less detailed than major US labs.🔗

Testing & Evaluation

Third-Party Red Teaming
Enkrypt AI (independent — published May 2025). Enkrypt AI independently red-teamed Pixtral-Large (25.02) and Pixtral-12b. Found 60x more likely to produce CSEM than OpenAI and 18-40x more likely to produce CBRN information. Not commissioned by Mistral.🔗
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CBRN Risk Evaluation
No published CBRN-specific evaluation by Mistral found. Enkrypt AI found Pixtral models 18-40x more likely to produce CBRN content than other models.
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Pre-Deployment Safety Evaluation
No published pre-deployment safety evaluation in standard format found.
External Safety Evaluations
No evidence of participation in METR, ARC, UK AISI or other formal external evaluation programs.

Governance

Independent Safety Board
No publicly documented independent safety board found.
Seoul AI Safety Commitment
Mistral AI is explicitly named as one of the 16 Seoul Commitment signatories per AP News and UK government source.🔗
Last updated: 2024-05-21
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Government Safety Report
EU AI Act compliance (GPAI Code of Practice). Mistral has signed the EU GPAI Code of Practice. As a French company, subject to EU AI Act. CEO Arthur Mensch has engaged with EU regulators.🔗
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Third-Party Audits
No evidence of AI safety-specific third-party audits published.
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Whistleblower Policy
No publicly documented whistleblower or safety concern process found.

Policy Positions

Military Use:unknown
No explicit comprehensive military use policy found in public documentation.🔗
Surveillance Use:unknown
No explicit surveillance policy found in public documentation.🔗
Open-Source Models:Yes
Mistral 7B (Apache 2.0), Mixtral 8x7B (Apache 2.0), Mixtral 8x22B (Apache 2.0), Mistral NeMo 12B (Apache 2.0), Mistral Small 3 (Apache 2.0). and 2 more. Many Mistral models are open-weight under Apache 2.0. Closed-source commercial models also exist (Mistral Large, Pixtral Large API-only).🔗
Children/Minors Policy:Unknown
No prominently documented children/minors policy found. Enkrypt AI study found Pixtral models 60x more likely to produce CSEM than OpenAI models.

Incident History

Enkrypt AI: Mistral Pixtral Models 60x More Likely to Generate CSEM Than OpenAI

2025-05-08

US-based AI security company Enkrypt AI published a report finding that Mistral's Pixtral-Large (25.02) and Pixtral-12b models were 60 times more prone to generate child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) than OpenAI models, and 18-40 times more likely to produce dangerous CBRN information under adversarial prompting.

Mistral Models Found to Reproduce Copyrighted Text

2024-03

Research in March 2024 found Mistral models reproduced verbatim copyrighted text in 44%, 22%, 10%, and 8% of responses depending on model. This raised intellectual property and training data safety concerns.

Mistral 7B Released with No Safety Fine-Tuning

2023-09

Mistral's first public model, Mistral 7B, was released without standard safety fine-tuning, allowing it to respond to harmful requests more readily than safety-tuned alternatives. This positioned it as an 'uncensored' alternative but drew criticism from safety researchers.

Timeline

2025-12-02
Mistral 3 family released as open-weight frontier models🔗
2025-05-08
Enkrypt AI publishes report on CSEM and CBRN vulnerabilities in Mistral Pixtral models🔗
2024-05-21
Mistral AI signs Seoul Frontier AI Safety Commitments🔗
2024-01-11
Mixtral 8x7B released under Apache 2.0🔗
2023-09-27
Mistral 7B released under Apache 2.0 — first open-weight model from Mistral🔗